Don’t Leave Things on the Roof of Your Car

This seems to be an epidemic! Just last week we assisted two people who put wallets on the top of their cars and then forgot and drove off.
On Tuesday, while walking in Ocklawaha, we found a wallet laying in the road and after stopping at the owner’s house twice without any luck, we tracked the owner down by going to the county’s student database and finding a student with the same last name and address as the owner of the wallet. Three phone messages later, we finally made contact with the owner who was not aware his wallet was missing. We easily saved him $100 – $50 cash in the wallet, $31.25 replacement cost of a license, and the cost of a new wallet – not to mention the aggravation of cancelling and replacing credit and debit cards.
Then two days later while preparing to turn on 22nd Avenue we encountered a woman backing up because she noticed that her wallet fell off her car. She was lucky to have seen it fall, but she wasn’t lucky enough to have everything stay in the wallet. Money and receipts were blowing in the street and her credit cards scattered in the road. I pulled in the road and stopped to block the traffic so she could gather her things.
We’ve returned two other wallets found in the street in the past. It seems we have a knack for finding these lost items.
You may remember Steven lost his wallet in the same way only a few weeks after his 16th birthday. He too, was lucky that the person who found it returned it, but not before he’d spent hours backtracking in an effort his wallet; and he’d already gone to the DMV and paid for a replacement license by the time his wallet was returned.
Of course, wallets aren’t the only things lost by their owners when left on the roof or bumper of the car. Keys (Sarah, is that how you lost your keys in Tallahassee?), purses, and phones disappear in this way as do numerous cups of coffee. I know I lost a baby bottle I placed on the roof while strapping one of you in the car seat. At least I never put any of you on the roof…something I’ve heard about in the news.
Maybe the solution to this problem is to not go to the car with more in your hands than you can carry. Maybe this is just another example of rushing, in which case slowing down may solve the problem.
Don’t put things on the roof of your car! It’s time consuming, expensive, and frustrating to replace whatever you’ve lost…and since you don’t live in Marion County, you can’t count on us to find the items and return them.
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Mom